Question

1. How has a market orientation contributed to Dollar Shave Club’s rapid growth?
2. Describe how Dollar Shave Club embraces the marketing concept.
3. How is the marketing mix of Dollar Shave Club different from retail competitors like Gillette?

Answer 1

Before answering the question parts, Let's first understand what Dollar Shave Club ( DCS) is.

Well, it;s an american company which is based out of Venice, California. This has a very unique concept of giving the door to door delivery on a routine basis of razors and other personal grooming products.This is done on a monthly basis. The company has a membership concept which is very much unique in terms of other competitors . It has three membership plans which the consumer can upgrade or downgrade anytime. The membership segment was launched dated back to March 6, 2012 via video which went viral. The membership is very cost effective wherein the lowest one is for 4$, next for 7$ and the highest one for 10$.

To understand this much in detail, let's start with the answers to the question.

Ans 1) Market orientation means market analysis to built a product which can hit the market by it's uniqueness and cost effectiveness. Dollar shave club realised that consumers don't want to spend much on the grooming services like shaving so why not give them something on a subscription basis that should fulfil all of their needs and saves some dollars in their pockets. So, after deep analysis of the market trends and analysing various competitions like Gillette which always promotes it's high cost razors. They came with a concept of subscriptions which initially user can avail for less to less for a dollar and the razors delivered are of premium quality and cost effective.

This idea hit the market and the rapid growth of the company started. In march 2012, seed investors invested $ 1 million, Venrock with $ 9.8 million in oct 2012 were given to Dollar shave clubs which helped the company to expand further and making it a global brand.

Ans 2 ) The DCS had a very unique marketing concept wherein the CEO of the company, Michael Dubin uploaded a clip entitled "Our Blades are Fu**ingGreat" giving his speech in a sarcastic manner. This went viral and from here the comapany gained popularity. The clip won the award for Nowhere video Campaign at 2012. AdAge viral show. Also, in june 2013, the company released another clip whereint the CEO promoted one wipe Charlies. This also won an award for the best use of social media in 2014.

The marketing concept was also unique as it took care of all the grooming needs of the consumer in budget of their pockets rather than promoting the expensive razors and products like gillette.

Ans 3) Whenever we see Gillette tv commercials, we just can note one thing that they only promote their high tech razors and machines. Wherein it's not in the case of DCS . Though they have limited products but all of them are cost effective with door to door delivery to it's consumers which saves a lot of time of the customers. The marketing concepts of DCS have humour in them which attracts the attention of the users.

Not only they focus on the quality but also on the pockts of the consumers where min to min. $1 can be taken by the customer and max to 10$ as per the need and budget.

Hope this helps